'Sold his soul' to the 'ratings devil': CNN Trump cheerleader once decried him as a threat

Longtime GOP strategist Scott Jennings is notorious as one of President Donald Trump's biggest cheerleaders on CNN, often to the outrage of his fellow co-hosts and the network's more liberal-leaning viewers. He even denied MAGA billionaire Elon Musk's arm gesture at Trump's inauguration rally was a Nazi salute, then refused to repeat the gesture when a co-host dared him to do so, and Trump at one point reportedly considered him for White House press secretary.

But he wasn't always like this.

A mostly human-interest profile of Jennings in the Wall Street Journal published on Monday revealed that once upon a time, he counted himself squarely in the old guard of the Republican Party and raised the alarm about the risks Trump posed to both the GOP and the Constitution.

Jennings, a Kentucky native who previously served in the George W. Bush administration and served as a key adviser to former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, "penned an op-ed for the Louisville Courier-Journal" in 2016 which read, "Republicans must not abandon the notion of a restrained presidency in favor of a rampaging executive unbound by facts or the Constitution," noted the report.

Though he was a supporter of Trump throughout his first term, Jennings often tempered his praise with criticism of his personal character flaws, and he reacted with outrage after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, writing for CNN that Trump "caused this insurrection with his lies and conspiracy theories."

However, he has gone all in at this point, the report noted: "At the beginning of this year, he said on 'NewsNight' that he doesn’t like what the rioters did, but most of those charged paid 'a deep price.' In an interview with the Journal, he said the events were 'overdramatized recently.'"

In other words, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen said, Jennings "sold his soul" to the "ratings devil."

Jennings' transformation echoes that of may prominent Republicans who were outspoken against Trump when they believed he would lose the 2016 election, but came around to unswerving loyalty once they realized he had the full devotion of the party base.

One of the most famous examples is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who once wrote on social media, "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it," and now considers himself one of the president's strongest proponents in the Senate.